Smart speakers, also known as smart home voice-activated assistants, or voice assistants, are music speakers combined with a voice recognition component. Activated by a “wake-up word”, a user can subsequently ask questions, make requests, invoke notifications, and more. A recording of the request is sent to a backend, such as one or more cloud servers, for analysis. Voice biometrics and natural language understanding (NLU) are used to decipher the questions/requests.
The applications for voice-activated assistants are expanding. For the home user, obtaining weather reports, playing music, setting timers, and reciting recipe instructions are among the applications fulfilled in response to a user request. Voice-activated assistants are also being used outside the home.